


riches and wonders

by kenopsia (indie)



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-10 00:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15280005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/pseuds/kenopsia
Summary: Tommy was very sweaty, and Lovett wished desperately that he could muster up some disgust.“It’s — it’s fine, whatever. I am not built for hookups. Not everyone is.”“Did you — not, like, pull?”“What? Of course I pulled,” Lovett spluttered, gesturing at his colorful jeans. “Or I definitely could have. Look at me. Number one, I’m gay and visiting San Francisco, and two, I’m like a tide pod, cleverly constructed to hit all of thego for itbuttons in the monkey brain.”





	riches and wonders

**Author's Note:**

> title from the mountain goats song of the same name. 
> 
> a thousand thank yous to dasyatidae (https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/pseuds/dasyatidae) who hella came through and edited all of the ugly bits and any mistakes belong to me because they are THE SHIT. <3 <3 <3 <3

It was well past midnight when Lovett made his way back to Tommy’s place, and Tommy was running on the treadmill.

“What are you doing?” Lovett asked. Tommy had clearly been at it a while, going at a steady clip, his t-shirt wet and clinging. Lovett was horrified; he did not look away.

Tommy reached out and hit the down arrow eight times, slowing to a jog. “Trying to clear my head. Are you — you’re okay? You look a little...” Tommy made a see sawing gesture without breaking his stride.

Looking at him was draining Lovett of what little energy he had left. “I’m fine,” he huffed, shoving his hands into his pockets to avoid doing something stupid that would make him look miserable, like pressing his fingers against his hot eyes or running a hand through his hair. “Everything’s just. You know. Stellar. I’m on vacation and in the _prime of my life,_ it’s like a nonstop joy tour. Which obviously you can relate to because you're doing stress laps in the middle of your living room.”

Tommy lifted his arm and tapped a single button this time. he machine powered down with a final exhale. “Okay. Your night out must not have gone according to plan because you came home a bit of a bridge troll.”

“I’ll have you know this is me at my personal best,” Lovett told him, emphatic. He could feel himself getting worked up, manic and bug-eyed, but couldn’t seem to stop it. “My _peak._ The _you don’t deserve me at my Marilyn Monroe_.”

“Okay, cool, we will definitely be talking about it now.”

“Nope, I made a mistake. It’s bedtime,” Lovett said.

Tommy moved across the living room, closer to him. It was like — Tommy took up all the space in a room. Lovett had never shared a place with him and not been acutely aware of where he was. He assumed, when he moved in, that the feeling would fade, that he’d get used to Tommy.

“Tell me about your date,” he said, in that deceptively calm voice.

Tommy was very sweaty, and Lovett wished desperately that he could muster up some disgust.

“It’s — it’s fine, whatever. I am not built for hookups. Not everyone is.”

“Did you — not, like, pull?”

“What? Of course I pulled,” Lovett spluttered, gesturing at his colorful jeans. “Or I definitely could have. Look at me. Number one, I’m gay and visiting San Francisco, and two, I’m like a tide pod, cleverly constructed to hit all of the _go for it_ buttons in the monkey brain.”

Tommy looked him over, top to bottom. Despite the fact that Lovett had just demanded that he do so, he wanted him to stop immediately.  

“So why are you not built for hookups?”

“Because, _Thomas,_ there are things you just can’t do with a one night stand.”

Tommy looked amused for some reason. “Like what?”

Lovett huffed out a breath, ruffling his own hair. “Fuck, when did you get so...”

“Like _what?_ ” Tommy interrupted. Being at the center of Tommy’s focus was overwhelming. If Tommy ever looked at him like this when they were roommates in DC, Lovett didn’t remember it. It seemed unlikely he would have survived.

“I regret opening this conversation,” Lovett said.

“What aren’t you getting.” Tommy’s voice dropped into a register that skimmed the ground, rough. Lovett’s mouth went dry.

“It was a thoughtless joke,” he said, faltering, but Tommy’s eyes did not let him off the hook. “You know, just dumb stuff you can’t ask a stranger to do. No one’s getting a backscratch out of a one-night-stand.”

“Sure you can,” Tommy said, tilting his head like a golden retriever.

“That is both patently untrue and very rude, Vietor.”

“No it isn’t. You can just ask.”

“Wow,” Lovett barked. “The straights really are out there living their best lives.”

“Or put in in, like, your grinder bio or something.”

“Right. Well. Not that this conversation from the upside down hasn’t been thrilling, but —”

“Lovett,” Tommy said, and grabbed his wrist. He touched his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue. He tilted his head, as if some impossible geometry allowed him to look _up_ at Lovett. Between his sweat-damp hair and body and coy look, he was the very picture of post-coital. “That was incredible. _You_ were incredible, and I had a great time.”

Lovett’s heart thrashed around in his chest like a fish on the shore. His windpipe had narrowed at some point. Anaphylactic, or something. “This is fucked up,” he said.

“And I just wanted to know,” Tommy soldiered on, because he was a bastard. He was giving Lovett big, earnest eyes. “If you would do one more thing with me.”

This was happening to Lovett. He had apparently missed the chance for this to not be happening to him, and he was now wearing the lap-belt. His voice came out in a rasp. “What?”

“Would you just,” Tommy started. He was still holding Lovett’s wrist, but he let his grip go slack,and he brought up his other hand to trace a careful fingertip from the vulnerable crease of Lovett’s elbow down to the edge of his palm. The fingers of Lovett’s open hand twitched, short circuiting. “Touch me, for a few minutes?”

Lovett’s entire brain had gone off the tracks. He regained possession of his wrist. “Okay, we get it, you’re conventionally handsome and can get dopey shit if you want it. What a show off,” Lovett said, to no audience. “You see this guy?”

Tommy wasn’t laughing. “Apparently not,” he said.

He looked a little wounded, which Lovett thought was just _beyond the pale._ Adrenaline was still pinging around his body like a pinball, a rush of hot and cold. “Come off it,” he said.

“You don’t have to be a dick,” Tommy said. “I know you didn’t have a great night out, but you did come to stay with me, one of your best friends. I was just trying to help.”

It wasn’t Tommy’s fault that Lovett had spent years swallowing down his attraction to Tommy, to the wide angles of his bone structure and bitchy way he responded to people before eight in the morning, the sly sideways glances he gave Lovett when they were telepathically communicating that they both hated a conversation they were enduring under duress and the affection Tommy showed all dogs but that was especially attractive when he was leaning down to talk to Pundit—

Lovett fell back on years of training as he stepped close and pretended to fix the neck of Tommy’s tee. “It’s cute that you thought that would work for me.”

“If it makes you feel better,” Tommy said, and Lovett could see the quivering line of his throat when he hesitated, “it didn’t work for me either.”

“What, when?” Lovett asked. Tommy didn’t say anything, just stood there with his stupidly big eyes, piercing and a little unnerving this close, and his stupid quivering neck. “Oh,” Lovett said.

“I mean, can we please forget this happened? I’m sorry your whatever didn’t deliver. Better luck next time.”

It was Lovett’s turn to stop Tommy. He felt almost lightheaded with his own daring, the impossibility of what was happening — of what Lovett thought was happening — and how he was definitely going to end up heartbroken and probably friendless when Tommy woke up out of this fever dream. “Here,” Lovett said, sanding his voice down to more driftwood than bramble, which made him feel vulnerable, like his collar bones were showing. “Let me try.”

Lovett reached down and took Tommy’s hand in his own, linking their fingers and pressing the back of Tommy’s hand to his own cheekbone, then leaning into it. He thought about what the nightlife was missing, the ache he sometimes feels when he pours himself back into an uber, somehow still lonely after spending hours in an attractive man’s company. “Your hair is so nice. Can I touch it?”

Tommy’s eyelashes fluttered closed. “Please.”

The couch was close. Lovett steered Tommy there and touched his shoulder to sit him down. “That’s it,” he said, high on this image of Tommy, pliable and sweaty. Lovett put one hand and then a second in Tommy’s hair, carding through it, touching Tommy’s temples.

Tommy leaned into his touch like a houseplant tilting towards the sun, and Lovett thought he could feel the memory being made permanent in real time, knew he’d remember this moment even if the year became a blur. He felt dizzy with the timefuckery of feeling a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment that hadn’t passed yet.

It didn’t even take very long before Tommy looked blissed out and content, Lovett’s hand in his hair, at the back of his skull, the nape of his neck, stopping at the hem of Tommy’s shirt to turn around. Tommy shifted, and Lovett’s hand grazed the side of his face.

“I’m, ah,” Tommy said, and he was almost talking into Lovett’s wrist, “so gross and sweaty right now. Sorry. You don’t —”  

Lovett leaned down, down, into his space, and when Tommy didn’t flinch away, put his nose right under Tommy’s chin and breathed in there. “You seem fine to me,” he said.

He smelled delicious, actually, smoky and damp. Tommy tilted to give Lovett better access to his pulse. “I’m definitely misreading some signals,” Lovett said, his face against the warm junction of Tommy’s jaw and throat. “Just so you know.”

“You’re a smart guy,” Tommy said, and reached for him, fully. He pulled Lovett towards him by his shoulder.

It was inevitable and terrible. Lovett’s vital organs were all tangled up, pinching and tight. He pictured future-Lovett, back in LA and miserable, regretting this moment and hating present-Lovett for being too selfish to stop it from happening. He apologized to that Lovett, moping and crying into Pundit’s fur, and leaned in to blur his mouth against Tommy’s.

Tommy made a surprised noise, even though he’d all but steered Lovett into his face, and the sound landed softly between their mouths. It was — not quite a kiss, but they were touching in all the places a kiss would bring them into contact, cheek and nose and lips. Tommy put his hands just inside Lovett’s shirt, touching the ticklish skin above his waistband and resting them there, his fingertips moving in incremental sweeps.

Somehow, Tommy maneuvered himself under Lovett, while the verb they were engaging in went from kiss-adjacent into the real thing, a series of kisses. He must have done it, because Lovett couldn’t possibly have, himself, he would have remembered. Tommy underneath him on the cramped couch was broad and sturdy, and they jostled against each other trying to not fall off the edge.

Lovett wondered if there was a way to get them into the guest room, or Tommy’s bed — if he was going to do this, he hoped he would get a chance to do it right — but he was a little afraid the house of cards was going to unravel from the top down.

Tommy pulled out of a sustained kiss to look at him. “Hey,” he said. He was still petting Lovett, just inside the coverage of his shirt.

“Hey,” Lovett said. He thumbed the button of Tommy’s jeans.

Tommy went pink beneath him. He looked like he was into it, conceptually, but stilled Lovett’s hand. “Some of us aren’t built for hooking up,” he said.

Lovett wasn’t sure if Tommy was making a joke at his expense. “I thought this was the whole point,” he said. He swung wide, because Tommy was the one who started this game of gay chicken, which wasn’t fair, because Lovett was _actually queer._ “That you can have it all. A hook up and a cuddle.”

“I don’t want to hook up with you,” Tommy said. “I don’t want you to go back to LA and make jokes about it to your funny LA friends.”

“What do you want, then?” Lovett had Tommy’s torso pinned between his thighs.

“You could touch my face,” Tommy offered, looking away. “Or, you know, whatever.”

Lovett leaned down to cage Tommy in, putting a bit of pressure on Tommy as he did it. “But you can ask a stranger to touch your face.”

“You can ask a stranger to touch your face.” Tommy agreed. “I’d prefer it if you asked me.”

Lovett thought about that.

“Tommy,” he said, finally. “Will you touch my face?”

Tommy’s face flexed into a smile beneath him, that genuine happy smile Lovett had seen more often since they’d all made it to the west coast. “I’d be — honored,” Tommy said. When Lovett went for his shirt, Tommy didn’t stop him. 

“Can I take you to a bed, with, you know, sheets or whatever?”

“Can you,” Lovett snickered, “sheets or whatever.” While he was busy making fun of Tommy, Tommy moved beneath him, getting to his feet with Lovett in tow with seemingly very little effort. Lovett tried to get some sort of purchase, to find his balance, as Tommy lifted him. He ended up clinging to Tommy like a buoy.

In Tommy’s bed, something seemed to settle in him, confident and sure. He wrangled Lovett out of his jeans and then climbed out of his own, and then went back to kissing him soundly for a long time, the friction of them both in their underwear, the expanse of Tommy’s skin, a soft, touchable layer over the unyielding bulk of him like a page directly out of teenage Lovett’s fantasies.

Later, Tommy moved Lovett from his side, where he’d been staring at him, wide-eyed, to his stomach, and then he perched carefully on Lovett’s lower back. “Lovett,” Tommy said—because he was a genius and knew how much Lovett liked to hear it, how much anyone liked the sound of their own name—and started at the nape of his neck, scratching down, short and shallow and wildly satisfying.

“If I’d known,” Lovett said, groaning into Tommy’s spare pillow, “that moving out to San Francisco would have you exploring hidden facets of your sexuality, I would have shipped you out years ago.”

“Not the city,” Tommy objected.

Lovett felt boneless beneath him, content and warm and expertly scratched. “Okay, so… secret bisexuality all along, or are you doing some experimenting you forgot to do in school?”

Tommy flicked the back of Lovett’s head. “It was never a secret. I had to put it on my disclosure form. I just — I was dating Katie, when we lived together, and then I was in a bit of a drought. And then you left DC, and it wasn’t any fun. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why I was so unhappy.”

Lovett was going to fall asleep under the slow sweep of Tommy’s hands. He was going to be in town for another four days—time to talk about it, time to get Tommy’s hands back on his face and his back and his cock, and the other way around—but drifting, Lovett wanted to say one last thing. “I’m not going to make fun of you in LA.”

Tommy laughed, and Lovett instantly catalogued the feeling of — Tommy laugh, the skin to skin rumble of it — as a favorite. “You can make fun of me,” he said. “But only the regular way. Like, it would be cool if the punchline is about your boyfriend and not some sad dude that tried to get with you while you were just trying to take a vacation..”

“Oh, that would be cool, huh?” Lovett said. He was trying to tease Tommy, but he may have briefly been asleep, because there was drool on his cheek. Tommy was no longer perched on him but was beside him, instead. Tommy was not touching but he was still focused on Lovett. His eyes were wide. Lovett reached towards him and gave his side a pat in a clumsy effort to find his hand.

“That’s not… good comedy,” he said, bringing Tommy’s hand to his face. He pecked a kiss against Tommy’s knuckles. “You're not a punchline.”


End file.
